1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing apparatus and method, and more specifically, to a printing apparatus and method for carrying out printing without any margins by inputting a print image having an area larger than the area of a sheet.
2. Description of the Related Art
In addition to systems that take a photograph using a silverprint film and then print the photograph, systems have been used which use a printer to print image data obtained using a digital camera.
FIG. 1 shows a print system that connects a host computer and a printing apparatus together via an interface. In a printing system composed of a host computer 1302 and a printer 1303, various data editions are carried out on the basis of various application programs activated on the host computer 1302. The edited data is outputted to a printer 1303 connected to the host computer 1302 via an interface 1301 (Ethernet (registered trade mark), USB, IEEE1394, or the like), as print data for printing. In this printing system, if the printer 1303 performs an operation of printing print data, a printer driver activated on the host computer 1302 displays dialogs or the like before the application program outputs data so that a user can set print instruction parameters such as the size of a sheet to be printed.
Further, in a printing system composed of a digital camera in place of the host computer, image data obtained by the digital camera is outputted to a printer connected to the digital camera via an interface, as print data for printing. In a printing system composed of a storage medium connected to a printer, image data stored in a storage medium is outputted to the printer as print data for printing. In these printing systems, the user can set the print instruction parameters such as the size of a sheet to be printed, from an operation section of the digital camera or printer.
In general, there is a tendency toward silverprint photographs printed without any margins. Thus, printers are known which can print a photograph without any margins (this printing will hereinafter be referred to as “no-margin printing”) in order to pint an image like a silverprint photograph. Such a printer outputs a print image of a size Wi×Hi, which is slightly larger than the effective area Wc×Hc of paper for output as shown in FIG. 2. Thus, the output sticks out of the paper to some extent to achieve no-margin printing. Some printers output the sticking-out part to an area in which the paper is not present. Other printers cut off and remove the sticking-out part of the paper from the remaining part. For example, see Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2002-187261.
On the other hand, there are printers or print systems which can print, in order to obtain an output result larger than sheets that can be printed by themselves, one page of print data on a plurality of sheets and join them together to obtain a larger output result (this printing will hereinafter be referred to as “poster printing”). For example, see Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2000-25277. For example, the print image of size Wi×Hi as shown in FIG. 2 is printed on a plurality of sheets 901 to 908 as shown in FIG. 3.
However, if poster printing is carried out without no-margin printing, margins are present in each sheet as shown in FIG. 3. Accordingly, in order to join the sheets together to obtain a larger output result, these margins must be cut off.
Further, if poster printing is carried out using a printer that can execute no-margin printing, some parts of the output stick out of the effective area of sheets. When output data 601 is simply divided and printed on a plurality of sheets 701 to 708 as shown in FIG. 4, some areas of the data are missing even after the sheets have been joined together as shown in FIG. 5. Therefore, the output result is disadvantageously discontinuous.